Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
ALICE
Charlie is quiet on the walk home from book club, and I can’t help wondering if I did something wrong. If I misread him somehow.
Did I push him into this? Does he wish I wasn’t staying at his house?
Those questions follow me for blocks, but they disappear when we reach our destination. When Charlie pauses in front of the cutest little schoolhouse I’ve ever seen. An old white building with a red gable roof and a bell tower that pierces the night sky.
It’s nestled on the edge of a quaint historic neighborhood full of tree-lined streets that they call the Lilac Hedgerow, and the exterior of the schoolhouse has been painstakingly restored. I wait for Charlie to move past and keep walking, but he doesn’t. A white picket fence frames the front yard, and he reaches for the latch on the gate like he owns the place. Because I guess he does.
“Wait.” I grab his arm. “This is where you live?”
Charlie doesn’t answer. He raises both eyebrows innocently, opens the gate, and tries to keep walking. I hold tight to his arm, letting him drag me up the weathered stone walkway to the schoolhouse, the bottoms of my sneakers skittering across the rocks. Halfway to the front door, he glances back, and the neighborhood lights reveal the faint upward tilt of his mouth. The way he’s trying to hide his amusement.
“Seriously—this is where you live? In an old schoolhouse?”
That can’t be possible. Normal guys my age don’t live in places like this. They live in apartments with three other guys or back at home with their parents. Or—if they’re my ex—they live in a condo they paid too much for, a place with ultra-modern fixtures and floor-to-ceiling windows that showcase their view of downtown.
Not this.
“Well, I either live here, or we’re about to get arrested for breaking and entering. Guess we’ll find out which.”
He starts to walk up the pathway again, but I dig in my heels, my fingers hooked around the soft inner curve of his elbow. “Explain it to me real slow, Blythe—and don’t skip the good stuff.” Guys like him don’t own places like this by accident.
Charlie hesitates when he hears that nickname, and the corners of his mouth hitch upward a little more. But he doesn’t call me Carrots in return. He doesn’t say anything; he glances away.
Lydia eases around us, hiding a smile of her own. “Yeah, Charlie. Tell her how you teamed up with Mother Nature to wind up with our dream home.”
Our dream home?
She doesn’t say that possessively, but I can’t figure out what she means. My and Lydia’s dream home (because this place is almost any girl’s dream), or Lydia and Charlie’s dream home? Because they’re a couple. Who live together. In the most adorable one-room schoolhouse I’ve ever seen.
That possibility hadn’t occurred to me until now, them being a couple. I thought Charlie called her his roommate earlier, but maybe he said girlfriend.
I let go of his arm. I’m not even sure why I grabbed on to it in the first place. Historic buildings just have that effect on me, I guess.
Lydia heads inside without us, and he turns to face me, edging backward so we aren’t standing on the same uneven walkway stone. “I had some down payment money saved up, and it was for sale. The end. That’s kind of how buying a house works.”
Nope.
He’s messing with me on purpose, and I grab his shoulders to trap him in place. Dropping my hands quick when I remember those shoulders might belong to someone else. That I shouldn’t be touching a stranger at all.
“Unacceptable. Try again, Blythe.”
He still doesn’t return the nickname favor, but he chuckles, and that’s close enough. His gaze settles on mine defiantly, like he’s challenging me. There’s a faint rakish gleam in his eyes, the barest hint of Dangerous Charlie, and goose bumps trail down my arms.
“Charlie,” I say slowly, “I got my bachelor’s in preservation studies. I used to work at the Office of Historic Preservation in Dallas. Old buildings are my life, and I need details. Spill it.”
He gives in.
“The guy who owned this place inherited it from his grandmother—he never even moved in. It got pretty run down, but it’s always been one of my favorite old buildings. My sister and I used to sneak into the yard to catch minnows in the stream out back.”
There’s a stream in the backyard?
Once Charlie says that, I can hear it. The faint melody of water as it tumbles past, pulled by a slow and gentle current. It’s basically the most relaxing sound on earth, right up there with ocean waves.
“After a while, the guy stopped making payments, and the bank in town foreclosed. They put it up for auction, and I had some money saved up.”
He pauses to glance at the night sky above us, as if he and Mother Nature really had teamed up. “A lot of people wanted it, mostly out-of-towners. But then we had a big spring blizzard last year, right before the big day. It was the most snowfall we’d gotten in over a century—but they didn’t cancel the auction. So I borrowed Carl’s cross-country skis, and I was the only buyer who showed up.” He gestures to the beautiful old building behind him. “And that’s how I scored everybody’s dream home.”
He turns to go in, his voice drifting back toward me as he reaches the front door. “Don’t get too excited, though. It isn’t anybody’s dream home inside. It was practically condemned when I bought it.”
I’m not deterred. If anything, I move faster, hurrying to catch up so I can see what condition this place is in. Part of me—the I studied this in school part—is a little too excited at the mess that unfolds before my eyes, all the tarps and tools and half-finished projects that pepper the main room of his house.
The dark wood wainscoting and the time-bleached shiplap are in various stages of repair, and he’s even kept all the old metal fixtures, including the potbellied stove from its schoolhouse days. The ancient chalkboard is still there too, hanging on the far wall, and I can almost feel what it would’ve been like to walk in here a hundred years ago. Wherever I look, this place still has its old-building charm.
Once we pass the mudroom, there’s a staircase to my left and a long wooden dining table in front of me, the rest of the wide-open living room waiting on the other side. But the real highlight is to my right.
The kitchen.
I’m not even a kitchen person—I barely cook—but that room has been renovated to perfection, the only finished space as far as the eye can see.
The entrance is right off the dining area, and it’s a cozy nook of a room with butcher block counters and a weathered farmhouse sink. The backsplash looks like it’s made out of an old chalkboard, and above it, thin shiplap planks stretch horizontally to the ceiling, painted in the lightest, smokiest blue I’ve ever seen. Like morning mist on mountain peaks.
On the far wall, across from the entrance, there’s a large window that looks out over the yard. Through it, I can see the moon in the distance. It hangs low and bright in the sky, framed by trees.
I let out a blissful sigh, then my cheeks redden. I glance at Charlie, embarrassed, but he isn’t paying attention. His brother dropped off my luggage while we were gone, and Charlie is halfway up the stairs with my suitcase and duffle bag, my backpack slung over one shoulder. A giddy brown dachshund trails after him, tail wagging.
I wait for him to join us again, but only the dachshund comes back, carrying a small stuffed bee. Lydia scoops the dog into her arms, calling him “her darling Cookie,” and I’d swear that dog is smiling when he tips his head to nuzzle under her chin.
After she sets Cookie down, Lydia heats up a small plate of leftovers for herself, and she makes some for me. By the time we finish eating and go upstairs, I’m exhausted again. A slim hallway and three doors wait at the top of the stairs; Lydia leads me to the right. “There’s only one guest room. Do you mind sharing?”
I grew up with two younger sisters. Sharing is a way of life. And even though I’m still a little nervous about staying with strangers, I’m mostly just tired.
I tell Lydia it’s fine before following her and Cookie inside, my mouth hanging open as I enter the most beautiful bedroom I’ve ever seen. Perfectly restored, full of charm, and somehow more amazing than the kitchen downstairs. It even has an en suite bathroom with a clawfoot tub.
Oh, my heart.
The bedroom has a taller ceiling than I expected, and it’s slanted to follow the steep pitch of the roof. There’s only one bed, but it’s giant. Lydia offers to sleep on the couch against the far wall, but I don’t mind sharing.
“It’s gorgeous in here. If this is the guest room, Charlie’s bedroom must be huge.”
Lydia gives me a shy smile. “Actually, this is Charlie’s room. He made me take it when I moved in.”
“He gave you his bedroom?”
“Charlie’s just that kind of guy.”
As we get ready for bed, a feeling closes around me that I’ve been avoiding for hours, ever since I left Jason at the wilderness resort. Once the lights are out, it catches up with me for good. That room is too quiet, and my thoughts are too loud.
My boyfriend broke up with me today.
On our anniversary.
Tears sting my eyes. I beg them to knock it off, but they don’t; they spill over. Soon, they’re streaming down my cheeks with no end in sight, and this is pretty much the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done: crying uncontrollably while sharing a bed with a stranger.
It doesn’t matter that I cried at the bus station earlier. Those were frustration tears—a product of being stranded and overwhelmed—but these are sadness tears. I thought I found my person, but I was wrong tears.
The more I try to stop them, the harder they fall. And let me tell you, weeping silently is not a thing. Before long, Lydia’s voice cuts through the darkness, and if it was possible to die of humiliation, I would.
“Alice?”
Her voice is soft and kind, like she’s worried about me. But there’s something else in there too, something I recognize from heavy moments with my sisters. A hint of playfulness, as if Lydia Sharp is used to being the girl who cheers people up.
“Don’t be alarmed,” she says carefully, teasingly, “but are we having an only-one-bed moment right now? Because I pictured these very differently.”
As soon as she says that, I can’t stop laughing. We both are, and that joke is a balm for my soul. Even Cookie joins in. He lets out a plaintive howl from his dog bed, ready to make as much noise as we are, and we laugh harder.
Once we calm down, we talk a little more. About past hurts and future hopes and how dumb ex-boyfriends can be. As we drift off to sleep, all I can think is that today hasn’t been completely bad.
So much went wrong, but if I come out of this with a new friend like Lydia, maybe that’s the only happily ever after I need.
I’m not sure what time it is when I wake up. There’s a noise outside, the squeal of Charlie’s white picket fence. Or maybe it’s the wind.
Sneaking out of bed, I peer through the window that looks out over the front yard, expecting to see nothing. Just trees and stars and quiet homes. But the dark shape waiting by the gate definitely isn’t nothing.
Hide.
That’s what I should do: go back to bed and pretend nothing happened. Wait for morning when it’s safe. Instead I reach for the mace in my backpack and go full Stealth Kilpatrick.
Before I know it, I’m outside, the cold pathway stones nipping the bottoms of my feet. Who knows what I think I’m doing out here, what I think I’m going to accomplish alone in the dark. I’m half asleep and mostly delirious, but it doesn’t matter.
I’m alone.
The mysterious figure is gone, and all that’s left is an odd glimmer in the moonlight.
There’s something stuck between the slats of Charlie’s picket fence. A white business card with bold black letters in an antique font.
The Victorian
I don’t know what that means, who that is. But when I flip over the card, there’s a message scrawled on the back. And I think it’s for me.
Welcome to the neighborhood.